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•CINCINNATI (AP) -- Republican Mitt Romney is standing behind Indiana Senate hopeful Richard Mourdock as President Barack Obama's campaign keeps up criticism of Romney's ties to a candidate who said pregnancies that result from rape are "something God intended."
•Romney's campaign has said he disagreed with Mourdock's remark, which came in a debate Tuesday with his opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly. But Romney is standing by his endorsement of Mourdock -- and not asking the Indiana state treasurer to take down an ad Romney filmed Monday in support.
•The remark thrust a contentious social issue back into the presidential race as Election Day draws near. Early voting has begun in many states, and Obama himself plans to vote Thursday in Chicago. It's an inopportune time for Republicans, who had been seeing gains in polls among female voters critical to a Romney victory. Democrats are eager to link Romney and other Republican candidates to Mourdock's remarks.
•"Romney must withdraw his support of Mourdock-- who'd force rape victims to bear an attacker's child as 'God intended,'" Obama's campaign wrote on the president's campaign Twitter account.
•On "The Tonight Show" Wednesday, Obama criticized Mourdock for his comments, saying "rape is rape" and distinctions offered by the Republican candidate "don't make any sense to me."
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•TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's crippled nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tons of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors, the manager of the water treatment team said.
•About 200,000 tons of radioactive water -- enough to fill more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume of water will more than triple within three years.

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